I had a chance to get out over the Turkey Fest holiday and use my new CPS rod on the Sky with a couple buds. Working out the kinks with a new rod is always fun eh? We started out high up and hit a couple spots on both forks first, looking for late summer steel. Nada. I even tried skating some dries but nothing wanted to play, so we went to a couple spots lower on the mainstem.



First up was a silly little bull that wanted to maim, torture and execute my purple woolly bugger



Then after a celebratory corn dog and Foster's Bitter, the weather cleared and we were off to scout new spots.

A couple days later we were back at it, hitting some of my old haunts on the middle river. I got this feisty little silver on the ugliest damn scraggly brown bugger you ever saw in your life, this fly had been through the ringer and looked like it was crapped out the hind end of a goat!



A couple fishless hours later, I hooked up an indicator on a floating line and put on a pink bunny leech, dead drifting it on the current seams. After about 15 casts, the 'cator zipped under and rocketed out to midriver at lightning speed. I woke my sluggish arse up from a post-lunch "Guinness Waking Nap" to set the hook. He hit it hard! You can see he took it pretty deep in his piehole. Pretty rugged stuff for a late summer hatchery fish......some nice jumps too.



Then I had a surprise about two hours later. The day was winding down, I was swinging a huge black bugger on a 15' Rio type 6 head looped off my floater, and THWACK the rod buries while I'm yapping to my buds about having a cold brew back at my rig. Big, fat, mean and aggressive.....this old boy was obviously protecting his 'hood, so I landed him as quickly as I could, my already-buzzed pal snapped this quick, crappy, hazy shot and I let him go make more babies.



Not a bad way to spend a few days. Weird thing is......not ONE of us hooked any chum either day or even saw one caught!